


The Sweater Curse

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hanukkah, Judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21501514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: She’s never made a sweater before, but she saw the pattern on Ravelry and who cares if she’s only made (lumpy) hats before—she has to try it.  She has to make it. She has to make it for Ben.“You realize that Hannukah isn’t an important holiday, right?” Ben asks as she makes eye contact with him.  His eyes are big and brown and—at this moment—mildly annoyed.“Really?  Is it a giant conspiracy theory?  Part of the war on Christmas?”“More than you realize,” Ben says and for the life of her she can’t tell if he’s joking.  He does this thing sometimes that’s confusing—where he’ll say something that sounds mopey but is actually snarky and it disarms her every damn time.  “In any event, ugly Hanukkah sweaters definitely aren’t a thing the way ugly Christmas sweaters are.”“Well, they are now,” Rey says firmly.  “I’m making you an ugly Hanukkah sweater.  Deal with it. And stop moving.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 156
Kudos: 975
Collections: Jewish Reylo Fics, Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	The Sweater Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts), [commandercrouton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/commandercrouton/gifts).



_“Hold still.”_

_“I am holding still.”_

_“You’re not holding still.”_

_“Do you want me to stop breathing? Because that’s the only reason I’m moving right now.”_

_Rey looks up at him. She is focusing. On his chest. More specifically: on measuring his chest. Because she wants to get this right._

_She’s never made a sweater before, but she saw the pattern on Ravelry and who cares if she’s only made (lumpy) hats before—she has to try it. She has to make it. She has to make it for Ben._

_“You realize that Hannukah isn’t an important holiday, right?” Ben asks as she makes eye contact with him. His eyes are big and brown and—at this moment—mildly annoyed._

_“Really? Is it a giant conspiracy theory? Part of the war on Christmas?”_

_“More than you realize,” Ben says and for the life of her she can’t tell if he’s joking. He does this thing sometimes that’s confusing—where he’ll say something that sounds mopey but is actually snarky and it disarms her every damn time. “In any event, ugly Hanukkah sweaters definitely aren’t a thing the way ugly Christmas sweaters are.”_

_“Well, they are now,” Rey says firmly. “I’m making you an ugly Hanukkah sweater. Deal with it. And stop moving.”_

_“I’m not moving.”_

_“You’re talking.”_

_He rolls those big brown eyes of him and closes his mouth and Rey goes back to his chest and her tape-measure. Good_ fuck _he’s broad. She’s going to probably need to adjust the pattern size, figure out how to accommodate for the fact that he’s a literal tow-truck of a man._

_His breathing hitches as her hands move across his chest, as she wraps the measuring tape around his bicep to make sure she knows how big it is because sure, the yarn will stretch once it’s knitted, but given that he’s that literal tow-truck of a man, it wouldn’t do for his arm not to even fit in the sleeve._

_“God your muscles are springy.”_

_“Springy?”_

_“Yeah.” She pokes one of his pecs. “How much time do you spend in the gym, exactly?”_

_“I don’t know if you can judge my gym-time, miss six-pack abs.”_

_“Yeah, but I don’t bulge. Are you a body-builder on top of being a lawyer?”_

_“Are you done measuring me?”_

_“Not yet.”_

_“Then stop getting distracted by my muscles so I can breathe again.”_

_There’s a slight curl to his lips when he says it and Rey’s going to make him regret it._

_She’s going to make him the ugliest fucking Hanukkah sweater in the world._

_-_

Rey learned several things about sweaters while she was making Ben’s Hanukkah sweater:

The first is that sweaters take for-fucking-ever, especially when you’re knitting them for a literal tow-truck of a man. They’re just big. And you think you are halfway done and you just have the sleeves left but the sleeves are only just smaller than the front and the back, and somehow manage to take longer because you feel suddenly like you’re back to square one while you’re knitting them.

The second is that there’s something called “the sweater curse.” Rey pokes around on knitting forums and finds people mentioning it a few times. _Don’t make a sweater for your boyfriend, or else you’ll break up before you finish knitting it._ But that doesn’t matter so much in this instance, since Ben’s extremely not her boyfriend. Ben’s the friend she argues with loudly at bars, the one who makes terrible life and political choices (which is why he probably never had anyone who’s wanted to make him a Hanukkah sweater before, she tells him more than once), the one she talks to when she’s feeling like the world is crushing her because she is constantly having to fight for her place in it—and what is she even fighting _for_ ? ( _Yourself,_ he tells her every time. And it makes her feel like she _can_ when it comes from his lips and not hers, somehow.)

And the last is that she was woefully ill-equipped to knit this sweater. The four lumpy hats she’s made for Finn, Poe, Rose, and Jannah have in no way prepared her for having to compare her progress to the measurements she made of Ben’s chest (whose exact circumference she will never forget. It has been burned into her brain from checking, and double checking, and triple checking her chart), fucking _colorwork_ tension (she had to rip back four times because the tension just wasn’t working), and why did she say she was going to do this? Because she said it and she’s a woman of her word and if she says she’s going to do something, she’s going to do it.

She’s going to make Ben wear the ugliest Hanukkah sweater she can think of—despite his confusing opinions about Hanukkah and holidays more generally. 

She just hadn’t wanted it to be...this ugly.

She can spot so many mistakes as she wraps it in tissue paper to bring to Ben’s “not a Birthday” party. There are bunched up places where she didn’t get the tension right (despite ripping back and trying again), there are a few places where she visibly added stitches and then in a panic decreased them again a few rows later when she realized what she’d done. It’s ugly, but it’s not _good_ ugly. It’s bad ugly.

 _But you still made it,_ says a voice in the back of her mind that sounds like Ben. 

And she’s never making another one ever again.

-

When Ben unwraps the tissue paper, about four things go through his mind all at the same time:

  1. He can’t believe Rey actually is giving him a fucking Hanukkah sweater on his birthday;
  2. He wishes goyim would fucking stop with their fixation on Hanukkah it’s _not_ an important holiday and it’s _not_ a fucking Christmas stand-in;
  3. She really made him a fucking Hanukkah sweater, just as ugly as she said it would be; and
  4. She really made him a sweater. Someone made him a sweater.



That last thought catches in his throat. He’s not the sort of person that people usually spend more than four seconds thinking of a gift for (Gift cards. Always gift cards. Ever since he was a kid, gift cards, because his parents had stopped fucking knowing what to get him.), much less someone that someone spends literal hours making something for with their own two hands. The wool is soft as he runs his fingers over it. He has no idea what makes wool nice but this doesn’t feel like the sweaters he’s ever bought for himself at J. Crew to wear to work on the rare business casual day. For one thing, it’s thicker and he’s sure it’ll keep him warmer.

He looks up at Rey.

“This is fucking hideous,” he tells her because he’s an idiot who can’t keep his foot out of his mouth. Who the fuck tells someone that their handmade birthday/Hanukkah present is fucking hideous? Especially when you have a fucking lump in your throat?

Rey grins. “Put it on, then,” she says. 

“You’re really going to make me do this?”

“Listen, I’m never going to forget how wide your chest is—the least you can do is put the damn thing on and humor me for four seconds.”

So he peels off his J. Crew sweater and tosses it onto one of his dining room chairs, then puts on the sweater that Rey made him.

Or tries to.

It’s...well, it does get around his chest, but it feels a little weird. He tries to smooth out some of the bunches but it doesn’t really work. And yet, weirdly, it does, because the candles and stems on the fucking hannukiah are bunching out and sort of creating this weird unintentionally accurate three-d effect. 

It’s the warmest sweater he’s ever worn.

And the softest.

And by far the ugliest.

And he never wants to take it off.

He wears it for the rest of the night, and long after his apartment has been emptied of its six guests, he sits there on his couch just running his fingers over it. Somewhere over the course of the night, the first three items on his list have faded and only the last one remains.

She really made him a sweater. Someone made him a sweater.

-

“What the fuck is that?” Hux asks when Ben shrugs out of his coat. Hux’s beady blue eyes are on Ben’s chest and unlike when he’s usually judging Ben’s tie, he’s definitely judging Ben’s sweater.

“Prefer I’d leave the Hanukkah spirit at home?” Ben asks.

“We have a menorah out front,” Hux says. “I can’t believe you spent money on Hanukkah sweater.”

“I didn’t. Someone made it for me,” Ben says and god damn it, why does his voice do that thing where it sort of swells with pride, where it sort of sounds like he’s trying to say _no one ever wants to make you ugly Hanukkah sweaters, do they Hux_ because, well, he is.

“You must really like them,” Hux says. “I’d put it straight in the fire.”

Which is what makes Ben decide that he’s going to actually wear the thing all day. He’d been sort of planning on doing that anyway. It’s a casual Friday. But adding an _it’ll annoy Hux_ to the _someone actually wanted to make me a sweater_ seems like the best thing to do.

“Is Hanukkah even happening now? We haven’t put the menorah out front,” Hux asks him at lunch, clearly fixating on the sweater.

“It’s late this year. Around Christmas.”

“So why are you wearing that thing now?”

“Because it’s cold outside now and people are already putting out Christmas decorations despite the fact that it’s not Thanksgiving and if there’s one thing the Jews believe in, it’s the war on Christmas and we’re on the side of Thanksgiving.”

Hux rolls his eyes. “Haha, very funny,” he says, sounding not even a little bit amused. “I still think you should put it in the fire.”

“You say one more word to insult it and I’m wearing it every day until winter is over.”

Hux raises his eyebrows. “Does it really matter that much to you, Solo? Who made it, your mother?”

Ben grinds his teeth. Hux is annoyingly perceptive and has, over five years at the firm and—for some unfathomable reason—two clerkships that they’d somehow managed to end up with the same judge for, picked up on the fact that Ben does not talk to or about his mother.

“A friend. But you wouldn’t know what it’s like to have one of those, would you?”

And before he can even properly internally back-pat on how smooth that response was, Hux is saying, 

“Must be one _special_ friend. But of course it couldn’t be. You wouldn’t know what it’s like to have one of those, would you?”

And he smirks as he leaves Ben standing there, rooted to the ground.

-

Because there is something special about Rey—about how she fights him but doesn’t seem to hate him, about how she thinks he can do better but doesn’t seem disappointed in him, about how she calls him when she’s feeling low because she knows that he’ll make her feel better, because he gets it—he gets feeling low and isolated and like the world is weighing him down.

She smiles and his heart stops, she gets angry and he wants to burn the thing that made her angry to the ground, and she made him a fucking sweater.

The warmest, softest, most uncomfortable sweater he’s ever owned but it actually fits his chest and arms both—usually he has to pick between one or the other at J. Crew—even if it is weirdly bunchy in some places. 

And yeah, he wears it every casual Friday just to annoy Hux, but every time he puts it on—even in the comfort of his own home, just because it’s cold and dark and he has a sweater someone made him—he feels a little bit like her arms are around him.

 _A_ special _friend._

Fuck. 

Fucking Hux for putting that in his head now, because he can’t stop thinking about it—her smile, her hair, the way her hands felt when she poked and prodded and measured him to make this fucking sweater.

It’s late one Friday night, when he wants to be home with his Chinese food but is actually in the office, wearing Rey’s sweater, hitting his head against a wall about a case he doesn’t want to be on, that he realizes:

  1. He’s a fucking idiot;
  2. He can’t go on like this;
  3. He’s going to ruin everything because that’s what he does—ruin everything; but
  4. She made him a fucking Hannukah sweater so maybe, just maybe, everything won’t be ruined.



-

“Latkes?”

“Yes. I’m making latkes. Want to come over?”

“I thought you hated Hanukkah?”

“Yeah, but it’s dark and cold and it’s never a bad time for fried potatoes.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Neither did I.”

Rey smiles into her phone. She’s never been invited over to someone’s holiday anything. She and Finn started their own Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, but she’s never been invited to anyone else’s. But despite Ben’s protestations, that’s what this is. She doesn’t know much about Hanukkah, but she knows latkes are involved. 

“Should I bring anything?”

“Apple sauce or sour cream.”

“Haha, very funny.”

“See, you think I’m joking, but I’m not. Make sure it’s not some weak low-fat shit, either. This holiday’s about greasing it up.”

And she can’t tell if he’s joking again, so she gets the apple sauce and sour cream and brings it over to Ben’s.

He’s wearing the sweater. The sleeves are rolled up, revealing very nicely sculpted forearms, and he looks overheated, but he’s wearing it as he stands by his stove, frying shredded potatoes into pancakes.

“Sour cream,” she says, placing it on the counter next to him. “And apple sauce.”

“Thank you,” he says and he nods to one of his cabinets. “Bowls are in there, though I suppose we could serve out of the containers.”

“You really weren’t kidding?”

“I really wasn’t kidding.”

Five minutes later, he is loading his latkes with apple sauce and sour cream and Rey is giving it a shot because she’s had weirder food combinations before and—

“This is good.”

“Yeah,” he says. “We know how to survive the winter.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “This is your first Hanukkah sweater. I don’t think you’d have survived the winter without it.”

She means it as a joke, because that’s what they do when they’re not fighting or curling up around the other emotionally—sort of joke and prod and push at one another, try to make the other laugh. Ben’s got such a nice smile when he uses it, and he uses it so rarely that it always feels like a triumph whenever Rey can make it emerge.

But his face doesn’t twist into even a wry smile. If anything it gets unnecessarily somber. He does that thing he does where he sort of chews on his words before spitting them out. 

“What’s up?”

“You made me a sweater,” he says slowly. “Why?”

“Because you didn’t have—”

“Yeah,” Ben cuts her off. “I didn’t have one. But you are still new at knitting. Why did you want to make _me_ a sweater?” 

Rey takes a bite of latke. “Just wanted to, I guess,” she says carefully. Now that he’s asking her, and they’re sitting there over a meal he cooked, and he’s wearing the sweater, a scary thought is starting to occur to her—the sort of thought that usually makes her want to run because _domestic_ and for Rey that usually means tears and abandonment at some point down the line. “I made stuff for Finn and Poe—I figured—”

“A sweater, though?” Ben asks and he’s digging in and why is Rey’s heart beating in her chest like this? Her mouth is dry, so she puts a latke in it.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “If you don’t like it you don’t—”

“I love it, Rey,” he bites out, sounding almost angry. “I never want to take the damn thing off. I’ve never had such a nice present in my life. It’s a fucking dumb fucking ugly Hanukkah sweater and I wanted to throw Hux out a window when he said I should burn it.”

“Oh,” she says and she looks up at him. “Then why are you getting your panties in a twist about why I made it then?”

“Because I can’t stop thinking about it, and so I can’t stop thinking about you, spending literal hours of your life making this for me, and why you might want to make anything for me, because no one ever wants to make anything for me, and how you keep joking about my chest and—” he cuts himself off, his cheeks going red. 

And Rey eats another latke. For courage, she tells herself. She always feels braver on a full stomach.

“So what you’re saying is,” she begins slowly, chewing, knowing Ben’s biting back the _wait til you’re done chewing to speak_ because he cares weirdly a lot about table manners but he is waiting for whatever it is she is about to say with a dry mouth too, “Is you want to know if I—”

And she cuts herself off because everything hits her like a literal tow-truck in that moment.   
That she feels safe around Ben, that Ben feeds her, that she wanted to make him a sweater to make him laugh and roll his eyes because she likes it when he laughs and rolls his eyes, but also because she wanted to make him smile that soft smile that she doesn’t think anyone else has ever seen; that she wanted to keep him warm in the winter, that she wanted to see him wearing something she’d made, that she wanted to make something that would hold him because she doesn’t get to hold him, so this would be a way to hold him.

“Like me,” Ben says quietly. 

And she’s too stunned to sit there and joke _of course I like you, Ben. I wouldn’t put up with you if I didn’t._

She swallows and takes a bite of latke and yeah, the whole sour cream and apple sauce thing really fucking works.

Silence stretches but it’s not the sort of silence that’s angry and churning as silences with Ben can sometimes be. It’s not even comforting and gentle, her tears cried out, her heart a relieved mess. _You know the truth._

_Say it._

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I think I like you. I do like you.”

And his fingers twitch across the table towards her and there’s this sort of fizzling that crosses her body when the tips of them brush against her skin. 

She’s not really sure how it happens—it’s a bit of a blur, really—but within seconds, they’re both up from their seats, his tongue is in her mouth and he tastes like fried potato and sour cream as her fingers tug at his hair. He’s warm in her arms, warm in her sweater, and he’s pulling her close—so very close. Her heart is pounding in her chest as her breath mixes with his, as he groans and she lets out a squeaking sigh as he backs her up so her rear is pressed against the table. She never wants to stop doing this. She never wants him to stop. She can’t believe it took them this fucking long to do this and there’s a part of her that knows, deep down in her gut, right next to the latkes, that this is the start of something new, something that will outlast the stars.

How long they kiss, she doesn’t know. Her hands roam his chest in that ridiculous, glorious, destiny-altering sweater she made him. But their kiss does come to an end, his forehead pressing against hers as they catch their breaths, as their hearts steady.

“When do I get my next sweater?” he asks her.

“Oh, so this was all a ploy.” How easily she smiles, how easily she jokes.

“I need one I can wear to court.”

“You’ll need to think of a better excuse. I know you can’t wear a sweater with your suits.”

“I’d figure it out.”

“You don’t get another sweater,” she says and she reaches up to cup his cheek. “I’m not risking the sweater curse.”

“The sweater curse?”

“If I knit you one now, it means we’ll break up. You got your one sweater until we’re married.” The word slips out and every magazine she’s ever read, every meme she’s ever seen on social media tells her you probably shouldn’t joke about marriage immediately after your first kiss with someone who technically has not yet verbally confirmed he’s your boyfriend. 

But she doesn’t worry about it because Ben’s eyes soften, and his lips brush against hers and he pulls her back into his arms, tucking her under his chin. “I think I can live with that,” he murmurs into her hair. “I’ve got a good one until then.”


End file.
